A Codicil to – and Amplification on – My “Whoosh-and-Crack” Post

My “Whoosh-and-Crack” post has received quite a bit more attention than I had intended or expected. That little essay has elicited comments from the left and right. I’ve been tempted to go onto those other blogs where it is being discussed, but I decided just to post my elaboration here.

When I set up this little blog in the final days of July, 2006, I had been a reader of blogs, but I had never committed “bloggery” myself. I was having some conversations with friends near and far, “real” and “virtual,” and it seemed useful to put my lame thoughts out there. It’s been rather amazing to see how blog entries can be picked up by friends and foes. Frankly, I’m been astonished – and both pleased and dismayed – by the traffic this little blog has received.

I wrote my “Whoosh-and-Crack” post mostly for myself and for those few sympathetic friends/readers with whom I had been corresponding. Now that it has gotten wider circulation, I find I need to make some further explanation and clarification.

I have been dismayed at the number of comments that, while intending to be supportive, have missed the point. Many comments have been along the lines of “Tush-Tush. Don’t worry. B033 was just a small step backward, before we make one or two steps forward.” Many commenters have assured me that +Katharine will “make it right.” Many have reminded me of the many Bishops who “distanced” themselves from B033. And, of course, many, many commenters have reminded me that I am on the Fast Road to Hell.

I know that B033 did not faithfully reflect where TEC stands on the issue of including, ordaining, and consecrating gay people into all orders of ministry of our church! Most Episcopalians are comfortable with the full inclusion of gay people in all orders of ministry. But I think they misread my essay.

I was reacting to the often-asked question, “Since B033 is so vague and gives so much wiggle room, why are you gay people in TEC reacting so viscerally and emotionally to its passage?” They’ve pressed that question in several blogs.

Most of the comments made along those lines were intended as supportive and encouraging. But, friends, they miss the point I was trying to make.

Here is the point I was trying – and obviously failed – to make in my “Whoosh-and-Crack” post .

Long ago, I was physically beaten. And now, even in the present time with a person I trust, those echoes still make my blood run cold. If you’ve been physically beaten, you get hypersensitive to little things. For me, it was the “whoosh and crack” I described in that essay. For another commenter there, it’s “anything that might wake Daddy.” I’ll freely admit: These reactions are not rational! They are visceral. Hear that? I’m openly confessing: It’s visceral! I hear the crack of the belt, and I assume it’s coming at me.

And, just like a friend innocently whipping her belt out of her belt-loop can “trigger” the memory of my physical abuse, in just the same way B033 triggered for me all those hateful “you’re not wanted here” comments from my previous five decades of life.

If you have no skin in the game, you can lecture me about how B033 left a bunch of “wiggle room” in our church's attitude for the inclusion about gay/lesbian members. But you don’t have my psychic history. Like most gay Episcopalians, I’ve been called names … stalked … attacked … beaten … all my life for being gay. I grew up (from ca. age 7) knowing I was “queer.” And I have endured verbal and physical attacks. B033 felt like another attack – and I underscore “felt”! Bishops and Deputies may not have intended it as an attack – any more than my dear friend had any intention of beating me when she nonchalantly whipped that belt out of her slacks belt loops. But it felt like an attack. That is why I am having so much trouble with B033. Because it echoed all the other verbal and physical attacks I have endured in the 40+ years of recognizing I’m gay.

I did not intend to say that B033 was the end of dialogue. I merely meant to answer the question so many people have asked: “Why are you over-reacting to B033?” Friends, I am not trying to say B033 was violence, nor that it was intended as violence.

I’m just trying to explain to you why some of us – we who have suffered verbal and physical violence for decades – are responding to it as if it were violence. I’m trying to explain why it feels so painful, personal, and visceral to those of us who have endured the “whoosh-and-crack” – whether physical and literal, or figurative and metaphorical – of gay-haters in the course of our lives.

Can you begin to hear the difference?